Friday, 4 November 2016

Although I dislike the commercial side of Halloween, we found much to enjoy this year in the dressing up and messing around with things that are a little bit scary. We decorated our windows and lights with bats, spiders and black cats, made scary Halloween luminaries, dressed up and played all kinds of funny games.

The costumes were fairly easy to put together. A classic ghost made out of an old table cloth for Noah. I did a bit of sewing down the sides to get a better drape and painted round the eye holes with black paint to make him a bit spookier. He came up with the idea of using his headlamp on red (just got it for his birthday) underneath to transform into a bloody ghoul once it got dark - it was pretty scary.

Maya decided she needed a Hermione Granger costume. I made her some robes with black cotton I had left over from the time she dressed up as Kiki the Witch. I used this tutorial. I didn't have material for a lining so I just edge stitched round the front to prevent fraying. She likes them so much she's been wearing them ever since. For the Gryffindor scarf we taped strips of yellow felt to a red scarf we had. Her hair is a bit flat in the photo but in the beginning it was very Hermione, all over the place and wavy. We achieved the look by plaiting her hair the night before and then backcombing it a bit. Under the robe she had a grey skirt, white t-shirt as we had no shirt and a grey cardigan. She was really pleased with the results.

Lotta's costume was the easiest. She wanted to be a black cat and I made that costume years ago for Maya. It's an old polo neck sweater of mine. I sewed ears made out of some old tights onto the rim of the sweater. The wearer pulls up to frame their face and the ears stand up. I also made a tail out of some old tights. Worn over black tights with a nose and whiskers painted on (I used water paint from a tube - so easy to clean off) the costume is complete. She was very cute.

The games included, a giant spider web on the floor to walk along in order to get to some treats thanks to no time for flashcards, pin the boo on the ghost, halloween bingo (we used Crayola printable boards) and the pièce de résistance in my humble opinion - toilet roll gruesome ghost bowling as pictured below. This was so simple to put together - 10 toilet rolls (recycled paper please), some black dot stickers for eyes and mouths drawn on with a red pen. What I really liked about this craft compared to mummifying one of us for example was that all we have to do is peel off one layer of toilet roll and we can use the rest.

We didn't trick or treat, we didn't watch a single scary movie and we didn't even get round to carving our pumpkins but we had a lot of fun. And anyway, pumpkin carving was a traditional 5th of November, Bonfire Night activity in the UK before apparently so we're going to do them then and maybe we'll have another round of bowling while we're at it, or perhaps we can make a pin the bang on the dynamite!

About Me

I'm Helen Lucy Goldsmith, mama of three, writer, poet, book maker. And also, homeschooler, sewer, knitter and maker of things. With my family we recently gave up our cramped city life and began again in the country. This blog is a place to record our adventures and write about the people and things I love.